During a discussion at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls the current healthcare proposal conservative compared to systems used by other countries. (1:00)
In a discussion at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C on Friday about the U.S Agenda for the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says that President Obama’s outreach efforts to the government and the people of Iran has not been done by a U.S. president in the last thirty years. (0:15)
By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed Friday the U.S agenda for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), touching on issues such as the Obama administration’s missile defense strategy, the conflict in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation and the threat posed by Iran.
While she read her speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., she discussed the “ambitious” intentions of the Obama administration at next week’s UNGA in New York, and alluded to a long term goal of a world “with no nuclear weapons.” While fielding questions, she reflected on the state of American foreign policy today.
“For many years, [the U.S] outsourced our policy and concerns about the nuclear program to others to try to intervene with and persuade Iran to change course,” she said. “So we were on the sidelines…we were just trying to figure out how to get other people to go on the field and deal with this problem and look where we are today. We’re really nowhere.”
Clinton also discussed the Obama administration’s missile defense strategy, which was retooled to focus on defending the United States and its allies in Europe from short and mid-range missile attacks. The strategy rejects the Bush administration’s plan to station interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland that were intended to stop long-range missiles that the current administration believes Iran does not have. Since Poland and the Czech Republic will no longer have land-based interceptors, the new plan eases pressure on Russia, displeasing some Republican members of Congress upon Obama’s announcement of the strategy on Thursday.
“This decision was not about Russia,” she said. “It was about Iran and the threat its ballistic missile program poses. Because of this position, we believe we will be in a far stronger position to deal with that threat and to do so with technology that works and a higher degree of confidence that what we pledge to do we can actually deliver.”
She later discussed Iran and the repercussions the country must face for not revealing its intentions to the international community for nuclear technology.
“Our concern is not Iran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear energy, but its responsibility to demonstrate that it’s program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes,” she said. “This is not hard to do. The Iranian government seeks a sense of justice in the world, but stands in the way of the justice it seeks.”
In response to a question from Brookings Institute President Strobe Talbott, Clinton also discussed the U.S. government’s strategy for restructuring the country’s health care policy.
“It’s interesting that what we are proposing is fundamentally so conservative compared with so many of our friends and allies around the world, who do a much better job then we do in covering everybody and keeping costs down,” Clinton said. “And yet some of the political opposition is so overheated. We have to calm down here, take two aspirin, go to bed, think about it in the morning. But I’m optimistic.”
By Justin Duckham-Talk Radio News Service
The recession may be coming to a close, but according to Barry Bosworth, the Senior Fellow in the Brooking Institution’s Economic Studies Program, the stimulus plan may not be responsible. In Bosworth’s judgement, the $787 billion measure to jumpstart the U.S. economy has been a disappointment.
“The problem with the stimulus program has been that it has taken too long to get it going. The crisis hit in mid September [of 2008], Congress never acted until the Spring, and then it takes a couple of months for the government agencies to get it set up,” said Bosworth during a panel discussion at the Brookings Institute Thursday.
However, Bosworth added, the stimulus plan can still prove useful.
“Most of the money is going to be spent in the future. It is going to be a big plus in driving us out of the recession,” Bosworth said. “Don’t give up on it, but what’s really disappointing is that recession after recession the same thing happens: we can not get the political process to act fast enough.”
Bosworth criticized provisions of the stimulus that were not intended for immediate economic relief, claiming that individual interest groups had capitalized on the crisis to push unrelated agendas.
Arlington County (Va.) Board member Christopher Zimmerman, who joined Bosworth on the panel, disagreed with Bosworth’s assertion. Zimmerman responded that while not all of the aspects of the stimulus plan provided an instant boost to the economy, many will provide long term benefits.
“All that stuff that’s being done that may not be great for stimulus are things that we actually need in this country to generate the economy that will take care of things like deficits and other expenditures we need to make in the future,” Zimmerman said.
With a filibuster-proof 60 Democratic seats in the Senate, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has nothing to worry about. Unless the senators discover something completely unexpected and horrifying about her past, she will be the next Supreme Court justice. And yet she still faces heated opposition and rhetoric from the Republican minority.
How did Supreme Court confirmation battles become so contentious? And why do some nominees face loads of opposition while others sail through? TRNS Legal Affairs Correspondent Matthew S. Schwartz interviews various Supreme Court experts to try to figure out how things got quite so heated.
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Senator Durbin references a Brookings Institute study which found 2000 guns travel from the United States into Mexico every day, fueling violence among drug cartels. He believes that additional measures must be taken to address the problem. (00:26)
On Monday the American Foreign Policy Council held a conference on the United States’ foreign policy towards Russia. Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institute said that Russia is engaging in a policy which is meant to keep the West out of the former soviet states, while reasserting its own power and expanding its sphere of influence.
Oil is the principle tool Russia has for accomplishing these goals, according to US Army War College Professor Stephen Blank. Blank called oil a “Swiss army knife” for advancing Russia’s interests, and said that Russia’s protected and subsidized energy market has risen to power because of pipeline control. He continued by saying that Russia’s move to own pipelines and distribution centers is a plan to dominate Europe through “forced dependence” on Russian gas and oil. Dr. Blank recommended that the U.S. and the E.U. reduce their respective dependence on Russian oil, and that the E.U. strive for internal political unity.
By Michael Ruhl, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service
Former Rep. William Frenzel (R-Minn.) said the bailout plan failed to pass in Congress because of the “real struggle between the hard right and the hard left,” at a discussion held by the Bookings Institute. He said there is “an extra level of animosity” between political parties, which made bills “doubly difficult” to pass.
Frenzel said that the bill will have to contain more “goodies” for it to be passed. In order to get the necessary 12-15 more votes to pass the bill, it will have to “move to the right” in order to get Republicans to vote for it next time. He was adamant the bailout would be passed because there was a small group of Congressmen that will change their vote.
Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Alice Rivlin said that the economy will recover when the United States “gets credit flowing again.” She supported the bailout bill, saying it will “probably work.” Rivlin said that if the U.S. does nothing, it could result in “a financial meltdown around the world.” She added that if we can successfully rescue failing banks and companies, that there is no reason to think there is something “fundamentally wrong” with the U.S. economic system.
Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Simon Johnson said that while we are in a dangerous situation, the U.S. government is ahead of all other industrialized countries in economic expertise. He said that while the bailout plan is needed, we must take a comprehensive look at how this happened. He said we will “continually have problems if [the U.S.] relies on stopgap measures.”
